Chasing Dreams, Project 2:20 - Week 7 of 12

M Easy 90 mins (7:06mm), Recovery 30 mins (7:52mm)
T 115 mins inc 4X18mins (6:03mm), Recovery 40 mins (8:14mm)
W Easy 105 mins (7:23mm), Recovery 40 mins (8:05mm)
T Easy 90 mins (7:02mm), Recovery 40 mins inc 5X30s Strides (7:51mm)
F 90 mins inc 10X2mins(90s) (6:33mm)
S Easy 90 mins (7:20mm), Easy 50 mins (7:17mm)
S Easy 30 mins (7:04mm), 60 mins inc Northern Relays Short Leg & 4 mile Easy Tempo (5:51mm)

Total 125.1 miles (7:00mm)
Aerobic Efficiency 994 beats per mile
Weight 142.92 Lbs Vs 142.83 lbs last week
Body Fat 11.18% (15.98lbs) Vs 11.37% (16.25lbs)
Lean Body Mass 88.94% (127.12lbs) Vs 88.63% (126.4lbs)

Fitness 87.2 Vs 83.4
Fatigue 100.7 Vs 100.6
Form -15 Vs -18.7 (Optimal)

A bit of a breakthrough week for me this week. Confidence has gradually been growing as I can feel myself nearly ready for London. I knew there would be no long run this week as I had the Northern Road Relays on Sunday but I was keen to keep the mileage high as there is no point backing off at this stage of the game. My midweek session went well with 4X18 mins at cMarathon Effort. The efforts went 5:32, 5:30, 5:28 and 5:25 with only the last one feeling like true marathon effort. It's such a nice feeling to do these sessions feeling like you have something in reserve as frequently I have finished them grunting for Yorkshire.

It was then onto a short Friday session of 10X2mins within a 90 minute run. The aim was to keep these really controlled and something around 10k effort. I was shocked to see the pace averaging 4:53 pace. I'm not daft enough to believe that this is a true reflection of my current 10k pace, considering I don't think I've ever run a mile in 4:53! That said, the important point is I wasn't straining for them, they came naturally as I focused on keeping a high turnover. I'm now really looking forward to the Salford 10k on Good Friday as I will be a few days into my taper by then and it'd be nice to finally get a time that is closer to my actual ability for the distance. Looking back, I haven't broken my 10k PB (32:05) since 2013!

Then onto Sunday! We had stayed at my mother in law, Bozena's in Manchester Saturday night to celebrate her birthday so I had done a nice easy run to Heaton Park where we won the northern relays in 2014. It was nice to remind myself of the bumps on that course. The relays this year were at Birkenhead Park however so we nipped down the M62 for a morning in new Brighton with my family in tow. It was bloody windy and the tide was in so we didn't really get much time on our deck chairs. We did pick some shells and scrabble around on the rocks for a bit though, being careful not to twist my ankle. I thought I'd save that for my warm up!


By the time I arrived the A-Team were flying on to victory and had an unassailable lead. Leeds City legend, Mike Burrett took the anchor leg. I was in the B-team and also anchoring. Despite my best efforts I managed to miss the changeover by about 10 seconds though. For some reason, I just wasn't expecting another Leeds City Legend Alan Buckley to be finishing so strongly! I soon got my skates on though and got my head down. Leeds City coach, Phil Townsend informed me there was a Tyne Bridge guy about 15-20s up the road so I made him my target. I soon reeled him in. I felt so strong, but inside absolutely cursing myself for not being at the start on time. That would mean I'd have to run even faster to beat my team mates' times! As many readers will know anything shorter than 26.2 is a bit of a struggle for me!  But today, I felt great absolutely brilliant. I pushed on, running strongly and seeing that there was a couple more people I could over take before the finish. I had no idea whether they were on the same leg as me or not, but it didn't matter, use them as a target. Focus the cross hairs and pop them off one by one. I crossed the line taking the B-team up to 9th overall and first B-Team! Official time was 12:03 which was good enough for second fastest Leeds City B-Team runner. Having done a bit of Strava Analysis it seems I missed the start by about  nine seconds so worth an 11:54 which I'm actually really chuffed with. I then quickly did a four mile Easy Tempo to get some more miles in before the trip back across the Pennines.

Coming into the finish.

I don't want to sound or even feel smug as there's still a long way to go. But I honestly feel this is going to be a special year for me. I think I can finally start to be the runner I always dreamed I would be.

It was interesting to see that my weight actually went up this week despite losing some fat. That means my body has built some lean body mass which is no bad thing. I think my nutrition is in a really good place and although I doubt I'll get down to 9% BF before London I actually feel stronger, maybe not fitter just yet, than I ever have before.

Chasing Dreams, Project 2:20 - Week 6 of 12

M Easy 90 mins (7:30mm), Recovery 30 mins (8:06mm)
T Easy 90 mins (7:39mm), Recovery 30 mins inc 5X30s accelerations (7:34mm)
W 105 mins inc. 5X2miles (0.75M Easy), Recovery 35 mins (7:53mm)
T Easy 30 mins inc 5X20s strides (7:31mm), Easy 95 mins (7:12mm)
F Easy 90 mins (7:36mm)
S 145 mins inc. 10M Moderate, 10M Easy Tempo (5:55mm)
S Easy 100 mins (7:36mm), Easy 35 mins (6:57mm)

Total 125.4 miles (7:05mm)
Aerobic Efficiency 1001 beats per mile
Weight 142.83 lbs
Body Fat 11.37% (16.25lbs)
Lean Body Mass 88.63% (126.4lbs)

Fitness 83.4 Vs 79.7
Fatigue 100.6 Vs 92.3
Form -18.7 Vs -4.4 (Optimal)

Shagged. Absolutely shagged. Not sure if it is the relentless wind or the lashing rain that has contributed to my tiredness or just 'mid-marathon training syndrome' this week but it's been a struggle to get out there some days. With the alarm going off and hearing the window straining under a shower of rain bullets it would have been so much easier to say 'forget it, I'm too old for this shit'. But something stirs, something ignites me as the alarm goes. I count down from five and then jump out of bed. Just a few more weeks, you've come so far, keep going, this one is going to be it! I knew I was due a week where tiredness would be all consuming and the doubts would creep in. Can I pull this off? Why does it matter? It doesn't. It's not important at all but it kind of is. To me. I still want to be able to look back and see what I achieved. Whatever I end up running on the 28th April it will be the culmination of all these weeks training and frustrating months injured prior. I know things are going well, really well. If anyone would have told me I'd be anywhere close the fitness I'm in right now, three months ago I would have bitten their hand off like a ravenous piranha. So I have taken it on the chin this week, this is what marathon training is all about, learning to endure. I will gain so much from the week just banked, that when the going gets tough on the Embankment I am well equipped to throw some punches of my own.

Last week's Spen 20 must have taken something out of me, not least because as I write this I am only just getting full feeling back into my forearms! It was so cold! Did I mention that last week?!?!

Anyway, the plan was to get back into the miles with a couple of sessions. The wind was even more repugnant on Wednesday so I opted for my session of 5X2miles on the treadmill at 1% gradient. I'd much rather stare at the back of my garage door for an hour and forty five minutes than be battered left to right like George Foreman was in the Rumble in the Jungle. The session went well with me gradually picking up the pace throughout. The last one was by far the hardest however and I was almost certainly above threshold at this point. They averaged 5:26.5 per mile pace. Of course running on the TM is not the same as outdoors but with a calibrated footpod and with the TM set at 1% to mimic the effect of air resistance it probably wasn't too far off being 'true'.

I'd been in touch with Mike to tell him how my session went and he mentioned that one of his other runners did a 20 mile run with 10 moderate, and 10 easy tempo. I had been dabbling with the thought of doing something similar at the weekend so thought I'd give it a go with some easy miles before and after. Again the weather was hideous, but at least the wind had died down to a 'slovenly' 15 mph. I went through the first 10 miles in 60:46 and the second 10 in 57:31, so I averaged 6:05 and 5:45s for the splits. The first half felt pretty boring if truth be told and I kept wanting to up the pace but knew it would get tough later on. I wasn't wrong although it wasn't really until the last three miles that I started to grow some weighty legs. So most of it felt fine, but doing these runs fasted it was inevitable that after c1hr 40 of running fairly hard my body would start to wonder when it was going to get some energy. If you click on the link above you will see that my HR rose gradually from 14 miles onwards, reaching just below marathon HR in the last mile. I suspect this was due to me running low on my glycogen stores. I had a gel in my pocket 'just in case' but I was keen to do it on empty as I know the training stimulus is so magnified when you can. I had taken a couple of gels at Spen last week to make sure I could still stomach them so I really didnt need to on this run.

I picked up an interesting book this week called Run with Power by Jim Vance. As most folks will now power is everything in cycling from a training and racing perspective and running is gradually catching on to the trend. I'm only half way into the book but so far it has helped me understand that there may be other improvements I can make for optimal training. In fact on Sunday, I tried a couple of different strategies for my runs. Running at much higher cadence than I usually do. My cadence at marathon pace tends to be around 165-167 steps per minute and for easy runs it is in the region of 160. This is very low. In upping my cadence I hope it will help with my efficiency. It certainly felt odd to be taking such shorter strides on these runs and I certainly had to concentrate as it felt rather unnatural. The aim with power meter training is obviously to try and get more speed per watt! The power in Watts generated from my Garmin 645 and HRM-Run strap is a fairly arbitrary figure but as anyone that reads my blog will know, I like to see trends in my training so will start to look at this in a bit closer detail. It may even give me more metrics to obsess over!

So a good week, in fact no a great week. I actually feel more rested now having done 125 miles than I did for most of the week. It may also have something to do with some more runner-friendly weather being forecast this week.

Fitness is increasing and Form is moving back into the optimal zone. Aerobic efficiency is down but as I said, I think this is largely due to the tiredness I have experienced. Also, the fact that runs outside have mainly been in terrible conditions and those on the TM, even recovery runs with 1% incline seem to be coming in slightly less efficient than they would outside.

Chasing Dreams, Project 2:20 - Week 5 of 12

M Easy 60 mins, Moderate 40 mins , 5 mins Easy (6:47mm), Recovery 30 mins (7:59mm)
T Easy 90 mins (7:15mm), Recovery 30 mins (8:12mm)
W 115mins inc. 24mins, 18 mins, 12 mins, 6 mins, 3 mins (3:00) (6:24mm)
T 75 mins (7:14mm), Recovery 30 mins (8:05mm)
F Rest
S Easy 90 mins (7:19mm)
S 140 mins inc Spen 20 (5:54mm)

Total 105 miles (6:52mm)
Aerobic Efficiency 978 beats per mile Vs 1005 last week

Fitness 79.7 Vs 78.4
Fatigue 92.3 Vs 100.2
Form -4.4 Vs -27.2 (Neutral)

The ability to adapt in a marathon cycle is incredibly important. With the best will in the world, one can write a training plan of what they want to do but only one thing is guaranteed; you wont do everything that it says. And nor should you. This week has been a classic 'bump in the road' that is so common in a build up to a target race.

I felt great at the beginning of the week, like things were really starting to come together and was excited about Wednesday's session. I was in London Tuesday and Wednesday with work and planned to get up and do laps of Victoria Park. Although I managed to do this, the session was very hard and the resultant paces were nowhere near where I expected. I ran these to effort rather than a defined pace, and it's a good job. As I'd have been done after the first effort had I tried to hit my hoped for paces. The session which is usually one of my favourites was 24 mins, 18 mins, 12 mins, 6 mins, 3 mins all off three mins jog recovery. The aim is to gradually get quicker throughout the session starting at just a bit below marathon effort. This came in at 5:46 pace, the 18 at 5:39 pace, 12 at 5:34, 6 at 5:25 and 3 at 5:13. Following the session I couldn't help wondering why it had been so tough. Had the cumulative fatigue started to catch up with me? Was I coming down with a virus? In truth even the warm up felt harder than it should. I then noted that Tuesday had been a particularly busy day and so I totted up how much food I had eaten and quickly realised that that was the problem. I simply went in completely underfuelled for the session. My aerobic efficiency on this run was 1011 beats per mile which was the worst of the week by far, when usually these sessions represent my most efficient! I made it the plan therefore to get back on top of my nutrition and have a really good feed. Thursday went much better and was back to 'normal'. I was still tired though so decided to have a complete rest day on Friday. Again this was unplanned, but sometimes one has to make an executive decision no matter how tough it is on the psyche!

The second hard run of the week was to be my long run incorporating the Spen 20. This race takes in much of the same route as the Liversedge Half I did a few weeks ago and so I knew it would be very hilly. I had never planned to race it all out as I am nervous about doing really hard 20 mile races in a marathon build up. So my aim was to run at a HR around 170 for the whole thing, around 5bpm below my marathon HR. This is therefore a very decent aerobic pace but not redlining by any stretch. Despite my car key dropping out of my shorts in the first mile and me having to go back for it and dodge all the oncoming runners, I was quickly back into the groove and got back on terms with the leading group which included mate Scott Harrington of Otley AC. All was going well in the early miles despite the horrible conditions. Little did I know that they were going to get much much worse! I hit 10 miles in around 57 miles and was gradually getting in a position to take the lead. I had perhaps foolishly discarded my gloves by this point as my hands felt like blocks of ice. They got worse however as all of a sudden we were greeted with a massive snow storm with flakes the size of tennis balls.

I pushed on still feeling OK, but now my hands were completely numb with stabbing pins and needles. I shook them vigorously trying to get the blood back into them. All of a sudden I noticed that I couldn't maintain my effort and my pace was slowing. I tried to run faster, but it seemed my body was preserving itself. My HR dropped and despite really trying I simply couldn't get it back up (ooo err misus). So what ensued was me running at what felt like a really really easy pace but unable to go any quicker. I genuinely think I was mildly hypothermic by this stage. At around the 15 mile mark the eventual winner Lewis Gamble-Thompson (New Marske and training for Manchester Marathon) came past me up a hill and continued to go away. From there, I made the decision not to give chase, not that I think my body would have let me anyway! I finished in 2nd place, but first Yorskhireman (Yorkshire 20mile Champ woo hoo!).

Photo courtesy of Mrs Harrington

So a somewhat bizarre week and not exactly how I thought things would go! Interesting that the day off really did lift my freshness quite substantially and I'm hoping that I can crack on fairly swiftly from here given the race essentially ended up being a 'moderate' 20!

Key things learned this week:

• Always make sure you're fuelled up the day before a hard long session! 
• Don't be surprised when your body does something unexpected, in adverse conditions.
• Keep the faith, this is all coming together nicely.

Chasing Dreams, Project 2:20 - Week 4 of 12

M Easy 60 mins, moderate 40 mins, 5 mins easy (6:58mm), Recovery 30 mins inc 4X30s accelerations (8:03mm)
T Easy 90 mins (7:24mm)
W 125 mins inc 10X1M MP(0.5M easy) (6:14mm), Recovery 30 mins (8:36mm)
T Easy 100 mins (7:40mm), Recovery 30 mins inc 4X30s accelerations (7:52mm)
F Easy 90mins (7:31mm), Recovery 30 mins (7:54mm)
S 155 mins including Progressive 22 (6:24mm)
S Easy 90 mins (7:33mm)

Total 124 miles (7:07mm)
Aerobic efficiency 1005 beats per mile Vs 1021 last week
Weight 142.4 lbs Vs 143.63lbs lbs last week
Body Fat 11.22% (15.98lbs) Vs 11.66% (16.74lbs)
Lean Body Mass 84.33% (120.08lbs) Vs 83.89% (120.49lbs)
Water 63.46% (90.37lbs) Vs 62.93% (90.39lbs)


Fitness - 78.4 Vs 73.8
Fatigue - 100.2 Vs 96.1
Form - -27.2 (Optimal) Vs -25.8(Optimal)





They say patience is a virtue. Is it though? Does one become 'good' by being patient? Does one get 'lucky' by waiting around? Does one gain desirable qualities by doing nothing? No they don't, people have to commit if they want to get where they want. It doesn't happen over night so for that part I get the patience bit but without commitment and creating the opportunity in the first place you'll get nowhere. Fast. At the start of the year, I was super-fired up about this year's running. I didn't feel injured and I was excited about what was to come, but with it that means time and hard, repeated work. I knew I wouldn't see breakthrough's every day or week but if I could be patient and most importantly committed, then those breakthroughs would come. In time. It comes back to what I wrote about last week in that consistency is a runner's best friend. Not a single session, not a mileage target, not a race time in the middle of a build up. The're all parts of the jigsaw but the completed picture is one of how consistent the build-up happened to be. I believe I am creating that consistency in my own training by being disciplined with getting it done, not pushing too hard and just letting the training take effect.


Last week I mentioned that my aerobic efficiency didn't improve for the week but this week it has quite nicely. My easy and recovery runs are much quicker for the same HR & effort and this is not because of what I did last week but because of what I have done over the previous nine weeks, and to an extent the past 10 years! It's currently sitting at 1005 beats per mile which means I'm fit but not quite at my best, but I knew that. When it gets down to averaging around 950-960 per mile I know I will be in really good shape. Thankfully I still have 8 weeks to go! I will write a separate post soon about Running Economy and how I believe aerobic efficiency is the most easily measurable metric to observe this trend over time.


The first key session of this week was a 20 miler with 10X1mile at MP with half a mile easy recovery. It was perfect conditions; no wind to speak of, cool and as ever I did my session on the flattest loop near where I live. I took the first effort easy and it came in at 5:39, but then gradually picked up with the following nine averaging 5:27mm and the last one the quickest of them all at 5:22. Recoveries were not done at a complete jog either, averaging 6:55s. 5:27 is still a touch slower than marathon PB pace but that doesn't concern me in the slightest. They were all comfortable perhaps with the exception of the last one where I was starting to accumulate lactate.


I then repeated last week's progressive hilly 22 miler and it was pleasing to see that I was around two minutes forty quicker this week for an almost identical effort. My aerobic efficiency for this week's run was 986 beats per mile versus 998 last week.


Continuing to see improvements in body composition this week with a bit more fat lost. I seemed to have lost a bit of lean body mass too which is inevitable but I need to try and ensure I don't lose too much as this is generally helpful weight to have! I wrote a somewhat controversial post the other day about trying to achieve optimal body composition. I want to stress that the body weight itself is irrelevant, it's the composition that is important. I have noticed the day after a long run for example that my weight shoots up by a good few pounds. I was 139.6lbs after my long run on Saturday, but then 146 after Sunday's run. This just goes to show that the body is a brilliant adaptable machine. My body fat percentage was the same after each run but I was storing 5lbs more water. This is due to the body's response to the long run. Fluid will be retained to help with the recovery process and also because it was a long run, the muscles also drink up the carbohydrate to store for another time, this naturally creates weight gain, even if it isn't fat. I fully expect that the body will get back to homeostasis some point during the week.